CSEC2009
United States US
A five year old girl, Shaniya Davis, was reported missing on November 10th (Tuesday), 2009. Her mother was the one who reported that she had been abducted. Originally, her mother Antionette Davis had accused her boyfriend, Clarence D. Cole, of kidnapping Shaniya, and he was arrested and charged with kidnapping on Wednesday 11th, 2009. However, on Friday, November 13th, 2009, a man named Mario Andrette McNeil turned himself into police with a confession of kidnapping Shaniya. Police found survellience of McNeil with Shaniya taking her into a Stanford hotel at 6:11am, which is a two hour drive from Fayetteville, NC where she is from (this showed an inconsistency in the timing that her mother reported). At 9:12pm Staurday, November 14th, police charged Antionette Davis, Shaniya's mother, with human trafficking, felony child abuse, prostitution, filing a false police report, and resisting, obstructing or delaying justice. On Monday afternoon, November 16th, Shanyia was found dead on the side of highway 87 in North Carolina. The official cause of death was asphyxiation and autopsy results show that she was also raped. Further investigation showed that Shaniya's mother allegedly sold her into prostitution for monetary gain with the knowledge that she would be used for sex. Her father has suggested that the motive behind selling Shaniya was to pay off a drug debt. The case is ongoing and neither Antoinette or McNeil have been prosecuted yet. Both of their trail dates are set for late January, 2010.
Forced Labor2009
United States US
A recruiter from Million Express Manpower, a former labor contracting company out of Mount Olive, NC, lured 30 Thai men to work in Johnston County, North Carolina with a promise of earning $16,000 a year for 3 years. The recruiter charged a fee of $11,000 for each man to "secure" their job abroad. Once they arrived, the labor contractor confiscated their passports and visas. "After about a week living in a motel in Benson, they were moved to a small storage building in Dunn, behind the home of Seo Homsombath, a native of Laos who is president of Million Express." "Homsombath at first contained the men by telling them that, without passports, police would arrest them if they left the property. Later, he showed them a gun, according to both Asanok and the lawsuit. A relative or employee was always at the house to guard them, Asanok said."(Asanok is one of the Thai workers who sued Million Express) "Homsombath delivered food, but it often wasn't enough for all 30 men, Asanok said. They had no kitchen, so they cooked outside on a portable gas burner. By mid-October the farm work ran out, and Homsombath took the workers to New Orleans, the lawsuit says. They spent a few weeks in a condemned hotel, badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, without electricity or clean water. During the day, the lawsuit says, they demolished parts of the hotel they lived in. Asanok said he spent his days tearing down walls and hauling piles of destroyed carpet out of the hotel." "The Thai workers, including Asanok, say they were never paid for their work in New Orleans. Some were so broke, the suit says, that they trapped and ate pigeons." "Thai Workers Sue North Carolina Contractor" - http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/601 "Workers: Promise became Prison" - http://www.newsobserver.com/100/story/551923.html "Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers" - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28labor.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Low%20Pay%20and%20Broken%20Promises%20Greet%20Guest%20Workers%20&st=cse This case is also mentioned in Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter's book, "The Slave Next Door"